Nursery Rhymes and Drinking Songs
by Omnicat
Summary: She wonders whether the two are in the same league. If the era between them can ever be bridged. Were they the same? Are they now or had they ever been... / 3x12


**Title:** Nursery Rhymes and Drinking Songs

**Author:** Omnicat

**Spoilers & Desirable Foreknowledge:** The anime, _Endless Waltz_ and _Episode Zero_.

**Warnings:** None.

**Characters & Pairings:** Trowa Barton x Middie Une, Catherine Bloom x OMC.

**Soundtrack:** _Row, row, row your boat..._

**Summary:** She wonders whether the two are in the same league. If the era between them can ever be bridged. Were they the same? Are they now or had they ever been...

**Author's Note: **"It's not the how, when and why that counts, it's what you do with it." That's what I'd like to say, but it wouldn't be very fair to the readers... Still, I will leave the context of Middie's reappearance and her reconciliation with Trowa up to your imaginations. If that doesn't bother you, I hope you'll enjoy!

**II-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-I-oOo-I-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-II**

**Nursery Rhymes and Drinking Songs**

The Circus, always on the move and with an ever-changing composition, has many habits and rituals. The animals are never called by their true gender; standing in for another's part of the show is repaid with a cigar or a box of chocolate drops, depending on the stand-in's gender; risky acts are called 'hamlets' and not a bad word is said about them; a newcomer's resistance to audiences is tested (as it is called) by raiding their wardrobe, stripping them to their underwear in their sleep, and not allowing them to dress again until the next day.

And on clear nights, whenever the stars can be seen, the entire troupe gathers around a fire, perched on crates or sprawled out in the grass, to tell old stories and sing songs from all over the world.

"_Row, row, row your boat,  
gently down a merrily merrily merrily,  
life is but a dream._

_Row, row, row your boat,  
gently down a stream.  
Merrily merrily merrily merrily,  
life is but a dream."_

The singer keeps the melody slow, like a lullaby. A rusty bass joins the lilting soprano upon the third refrain. A practiced baritone follows at the seventh, two less practiced tenors and a contralto at the eighth, and soon the canon reverberates between the tents and crates, twisting, rising and falling all at once. A baby squeals in delight.

Sleepy green eyes open when one particular soprano adds her trill to the choir. Her voice is so soft Trowa is sure only he, with his head in her lap, can hear it. And perhaps that is her intention; her eyes are on him, unusually open and tender, and when their gazes meet a rare smile comes over her face.

That face still causes a spark to shoot through him every time he sees it. Be it the old envy or pity, which, knowing she has returned them for as long as he has felt them, he doesn't bother to suppress, lingering caution and suspicion, or new-found contentment and peace. And maybe, when he dozes off with her scent in his nostrils and wakes up looking forward to whatever the world has in store for him, just maybe, perhaps even something that could be called fondness.

Ten years apart and nothing had changed. Not really. It couldn't have, or it wouldn't have been so easy to go back to the way it had once been between them. She stirs and disorients him as he stirs and disorients her, as always, her abrupt change of lifestyle this time around having brought them full circle from where they started.

Middie tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, flashing gold-streaked silver in the dancing shadows of the fire, and whispers over the chanting. "Did I wake you?"

"I wasn't asleep."

"Sure looked like you were." she teases, trailing tickling fingers along his jaw line.

He lets her, closing his eyes and tilting his head back to grant her access to his throat. As he defies gravity to stretch, arching his back off of the narrow ledge they are perched on, one leg dangling from the edge of the bottom crate and the other knee pressed to the side of the top one, hands tucked underneath his folded arms, he reminds her of the lions and house cats he favours.

He settles back down and murmurs. "You know this song?"

"Of course."

"Sounds like a drinking song."

A hint of sadness clouds eyes that are already grey as mist, her mind filling with swirling memories. Of a mother dieing abruptly and a father following with agonizing, heart-wrenching hesitation, of losing three little brothers to the overtaxed remains of a crumbling government, to blame, to bullets, to cruelly simple forgetfulness.

"No, silly. It's a nursery rhyme."

The flames make his lashes glow as they part, his eyes gliding down to the baby girl the chorus was roused for. Little Henrietta claps and bounces excitedly in Catherine's lap, looking around in wide-eyed joy at all those people singing her mother's song.

"I never heard it before."

And before coming to the Circus, she had never heard a drinking song. She had been too busy selling her soul to the devil, greasing her fingers even while they tried to hold on to the memory of a lost cause.

She wonders whether the two are in the same league. If the era between them can ever be bridged. Were they the same? Are they now or had they ever been...

Middie voices the question on both their minds. "It sounds nice, doesn't it?"

"_Row, row, row your boat,  
gently down a stream.  
Merrily merrily merrily merrily,  
life is but a dream._

_Row, row, row your boat,  
gently down a stream.  
Merrily merrily merrily merrily,  
life is but a dream."_

The lyrics are carried by a dozen voices at a time, ranging from high to low and from scratchy to smooth. The different verses weave together naturally and seemingly without effort, everyone starting on their journey at a different point, yet always with the same origins and the same goal. Never getting in the way of the others, but blending in until there is no telling where one ends and another begins.

Trowa, Middie and little Henrietta are the only ones not singing.

The moment their eyes meet, the former pair agrees: it reminds them of family. Of acceptance and support, seamless and unconditional and bound by blood, by the knowledge that no matter how different they are on the outside, they will always be the same at the core.

It also reminds them of war. Of how violence can destroy it all in the blink of an eye.

Was it better not to have memories of such things at all, not to know what to look for, but to be pleasantly surprised every time you discovery something brand new? Or to have known but lost them, leaving a mold in your heart to which no future can ever match up, inevitably marking everything gained afterward as a 'replacement'?

Now Trowa speaks what they both think. "I wonder if she'll ever truly understand it."

"Part of me hopes it will never be necessary that she does."

"Part of me fears that if she and her generation do not, the world will force it on them."

_As it was forced on us._

It's a thought they always end up coming back to, no matter the topic of conversation. They try not to dwell on it, but it is hard to live from day to day when the ghosts of the past whisper in their ears, offering a future which they do not know how to obtain.

Sometimes Trowa fears that it may be unwise to cling to her, who made such fatal mistakes trying to protect her family. Just as Middie suspects that some day she might come to regret sticking with him, who has never known what it's like to have roots. But they both know that when it really comes down to it, she would do anything, and there is nothing he wants more.

At the core they are the same. They know this because the affection they share has never before lasted with anyone who was not.

"Have you ever thought of having children?"

"You're not trying to tell me something, are you?"

She smiles, half reassuringly, half wistfully. "No, nothing like that. It's just... seeing Catherine and Christopher and little 'Rietta... it brings back memories. I guess it makes me feel a little nostalgic."

"I envy you." he says. He's lost count of how often he has told her this.

"_I_ envy _you_." she counters, as always.

"Uka-Dowa. Aumi."

They look down. Henrietta stands directly below them, on wobbly legs. Her mother's wide blue eyes peer up at them from underneath her father's black curls as she waves her chubby hands at them and gleefully mutilates their names. "Uka-Dowa, Aumi, loo'."

Trowa sits up, wonder written across his features.

"'Rietta, you're standing!" Middie exclaims.

"She was walking! Catherine, our little girl walked!" Christopher's strong, tanned arms scoop the girl up and spin her around, drawing Catherine to them like gravity pulls in stars. The young parents coo and the canon slowly begins to dissolve back into chatter, but the moment their gazes meet all Trowa and Middie see is the happiness in each other's eyes.

"Uka-Dowa! Aumi!" Henrietta insists nonetheless, and eventually her mother and father give in to her demand of Uncle Trowa and Aunt Middie, who scoot closer together so that he can take her in his lap and she can gush over 'Little 'Rietta' as if she were her own.

The years seem to fall away altogether; they look both younger and older at the same time. Catherine knows that what she is watching more than just her child's development. Baby steps come in many forms.

Two souls so desperate to find back what they had lost that they cannot see that everything they seek is right in front of them. But Catherine sees how her baby grabs at Trowa's fingers and crows with laughter at the faces Middie makes, and she has to smile.

The Circus never stays the same for long.

Their day will come.

**II-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-I-oOo-I-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-II**

**PSAN:** Hope you liked it. ^_^


End file.
